TBH, I’m not sure how much this will damage science. Very few papers are read by people outside science, and if you’re a scientist you know how to get hold of papers (emailing friends or authors, or asking on twitter).

This attitude assumes too much.

Many papers have been authored by people long since dead and most people only have copies of their work in hard copy in a few labs here and there. Often though electronic copies do exist… behind paywalls. Many journals though don’t offer full access to their older articles with the standard institutional licensing and as more libraries begin to liquidate their physical copies of books using the argument that the resources are available online (when this isn’t necessarily true)…. it’s going to become harder to find papers.

So yes, emailing or tweeting for papers is effective for new papers, not so much for stuff written ages ago, especially if your area of interest isn’t dominated by many other workers.